


So This Is Love

by weezly14



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1499192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weezly14/pseuds/weezly14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The apocalypse seems as good a time as any to swear off dating but it's funny how things turn out sometimes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	So This Is Love

**Author's Note:**

> In the course of my rewatch I was intrigued by a line of Beth's from season 2, as she's recovering. Can't remember the exact words or even the episode, but it made me think about her and Jimmy, and her and Zach, and the nature of relationships when you're coming of age at the end of the world. Anyway, hope it's not out of character, and hope you enjoy.

            She feels terrible for thinking it, for feeling it, but she can admit to herself that one of the first feelings she feels when she gets the news is relief.

            Which just proves how fucked up it all is, how gone to shit the world is, how different _she_ is that upon receiving news that her boyfriend is dead all she can think is, _I don’t have to marry him now_.

\---

            The apocalypse seems as good a time as any to swear off dating but it’s funny how things work out sometimes.

\---

            Jimmy’d been an accident.

            No, that sounds bad.

            But really.

            He was a boy from school she’d known all her life and yeah, he grew up good, and sure, they’d sneak off to the barn and go for long drives in his truck but it wasn’t _serious_. They were 16. And she was getting out.

            (It’s funny how now she can barely even remember what it felt like to have dreams and goals not rooted in necessities, but even in high school she was determined to get out of town, out of Georgia, even if only for a little while.)

            So Jimmy was little more than a fling, but then when everything happened he ended up at their farm, which ended up being some sort of safe house, and of course her Daddy let him stay (in a separate room on a separate floor because end of the world or not there would be no funny business under his roof). (That he was aware of.)

            And he was solid and _there_ and could protect her; wanted to protect her.

            And he was her first, anyway.

            (Her momma and her brother and his parents and little sister and it was more about comfort, more about easing the pain than about being in love or in like or even that interested in each other, and she thinks if she could go back and do it all over again she wouldn’t, not then, because she thinks maybe your first time is supposed to be special and not tasting of tears with your heart feeling like it’s been ripped out of your chest and the world feeling like it’s over.)

            (Or maybe she’s too much of a romantic even still.)

            But they become a unit. Beth and Jimmy. Jimmy and Beth. Separate rooms or not, it’s like he’s her husband when he was just a high school boyfriend and she knows, _knows_ that they will be together for the rest of this fucked up life because what else is there to do? It’s not as though she could break up with him. Doesn’t feel that way anyway.

            And maybe she’s just being selfish and spoiled. There are worse things than having a boyfriend who treats you well and gets on with your daddy and helps protect the farm. She’s _lucky_ , really.

            But she feels trapped like she never wanted to be. This is exactly why she wanted to leave as soon as she was able, so she wouldn’t wind up on a farm with a high school boyfriend turned husband, staying at home and raising kids and cooking and going to church and to momma and daddy’s for Sunday lunch, stuck in a life that’s not terrible but doesn’t ever change. She wanted more, and she always felt guilty for wanting more, but now here she is with the life she never wanted and she still doesn’t want it but there are actually no options this time.

            She is one half of JimmyandBeth, and she’s sure eventually he’ll ask her father for permission, and they’ll marry in some sort of little thrown together ‘cause it’s the end of the world ceremony, and he’ll move into her room officially, and they’ll all just live together on the farm, their people and Rick’s people who are fast becoming her people, too, and sometimes they’ll kill walkers and it’ll be the best sort of life you could hope for, given the circumstances.

            It’s fine. 

            (It’s suffocating.)

\---

            When the farm gets overrun she almost feels like it’s her fault. Like she wished it into happening.

            She always wanted to get out but she never wanted it like this.

\---

            She cries for Jimmy, of course she does. She cared for him, after all.

            But she didn’t love him. Wasn’t _in love_ with him. So it’s better this way. Neither of them got trapped into the marriage of convenience they’d been heading toward.

            (She stills misses his arms around her while she sleeps, misses that slow smile, the texture of his shirt under her cheek when she hugged him.)

            (But all the missing in the world doesn’t make up for the relief she felt, and she’s sure then that she’s not a good person, but maybe that’s better because maybe good people don’t survive anymore.)

\---

            She takes care of Lori’s baby and thinks, for the first time since she was a little girl, that she might like to be a mom one day.

            For now she’ll settle for being auntie to this little one that Daryl’s taken to calling Lil’ Asskicker.

            For now she’ll settle for this new life and whatever else it has in store.

\---

            (It’s not as jarring as it should be when Sasha assumes that Judith is hers. It’s not as unwelcome as she’d’ve thought, not as strange. She finds herself thinking, more and more these days, that she _wants_ a baby of her own. Eventually.)

            (She just assumes it’ll never happen.)

\---

            Hell of a time to date, anyway. The apocalypse.

\---

            (She looks at Daryl sometimes and she wonders if he was a dad before all this. She doubts it. But she can’t help watching him when he’s talking to Carl, when he comes by to see Judith and talks to her all soft and tender—she can’t help thinking that he’d probably be a good one.)

\---

            And she likes Zach, she does.

            She’s just not _in love_ with him, and—

            We’ve already heard this story, haven’t we?

\---

            The thing about the end of the world is that it makes casual anything impossible. It’s hard to take anything lightly when anyone could die tomorrow. Or this afternoon, depending on the day.

            So casual dating? There’s no such thing.

            But she won’t tell him goodbye and cry and make him promise to come back to her because she’s _not_ his wife or his serious girlfriend, and she’s not sending him off to _war_ , and it’s not her place to ask after him as though he is hers, because she is most certainly not his. They’re just getting to know each other. They’re having fun.

            Maybe one day this will change. Maybe she will grow to love him like her sister loves Glenn, but right now he’s just the boy she’s seeing, and it isn’t serious, and in the old world order he wouldn’t have even been brought home to meet her daddy yet, so.

            But she can already feel it, the expectation that she and Zach will become BethandZach and that they will live happily ever after, him going on runs with Daryl and her helping with the kids and the food, keeping their cell clean and homey.

            (For all that things have changed, some things will apparently always stay the same.)

            She tries not to worry about it, tries not to let it bother her, tries to deflect Maggie’s questions, tries not to lead Zach on.

            And she doesn’t tell him goodbye.

            (It’s _not_ a damn romance novel.)

\---

            (He doesn’t come back and she feels like a bitch for not crying about it but she wasn’t in love with him, isn’t his wife, isn’t—)

\---

            (She _isn’t_ okay but she doesn’t think any of them are, really. Maybe that’s okay.)

\---

            She finds herself agreeing with Daryl a lot these days, but never so much as when he admits that he’s just tired of losing people.

            She is, too.

\---

            (Maggie comforts her later. Says something about how sorry she is for her, what with how she’s lost two almost husbands.)

            (She doesn’t tell her that she wouldn’t have married either of them anyway.)

\---

            The thing about Daryl Dixon is she knows that before the world ended they never would’ve crossed paths, never would’ve become anything other than acquaintances, yet here she is with him, wandering through the woods and trusting him with her life.

            The thing is that it never would’ve happened. And for all that _has_ happened, everyone they’ve lost and everything they’ve seen, she still thinks she’s glad it all went the way it did since it got her here, with him.

\---

            And it’s strange, because this thing with Daryl feels more serious than anything she ever had with Jimmy or Zach. And she realizes she’s never had a grown up relationship, really, where there’s arguing and supporting and being there for each other.

            That one day at the shack—

            She knows more about Daryl than she knew about either of her boyfriends, and she was there for him in a way she never was for them. Never had to be. She and Jimmy never shouted at each other like that—but they were never as honest with each other, either. Jimmy was a boy who’d lived a life a lot like hers.

            Zach was a little older, a little more worldly.

            But Daryl’s a man who lived an entire life before all this happened, a life that wasn’t full of sunshine and rainbows and vacations. And he reminds her of something like reality, reminds her that before existed for both of them, that she’s not the girl who dated Jimmy or the young woman who took up with Zach. She’s both, or maybe something in between. A girl who went on vacations and had a pony, who has scars on her wrist and dead parents.

            In a strange way, he reminds her that she is _strong_.

            Funny that he would do it in the moment when he is the weakest she has ever seen him.

            (She knows that it’s a gift, that he allows her to see him like this. That he allows himself to get drunk with her, lower his guard, lash out. She knows that he keeps to himself usually, doesn’t let himself be weak with anyone. That he does this now, with her—lets her see him vulnerable—this is a privilege; this is to be handled carefully, gently, lovingly. He is giving her a piece of himself, and Daryl Dixon is not a man who gives carelessly.)

            So she takes it—and him—as is.

            She doesn’t tell him it’s okay.

            She doesn’t tell him he’s being too hard on himself.

            She just holds him, and lets her actions speak the words he’s too guilty to hear.

\---            

            She thinks he’s expecting her to leave. Reject him, abandon him, turn him away for not having saved everyone, for not being able to return her to whatever of her people still exists.

            She thinks he forgets that _he_ is her people, too.

\---

            (She stays.)

\---

            He’s not her boyfriend or her husband, but he’s certainly not her father or her brother.

            He’s—he’s Daryl.

            Something all on his own.

            It occurs to her that it shouldn’t be so easy, teasing him and feeling his presence behind her. Trusting that he’ll look after her.

            It shouldn’t be so easy to hop on his back or lace her fingers with his, lean her head on his shoulder. A few weeks ago it would’ve been unthinkable.

            But it’s _Daryl_ , this man who is so good and so beautiful and so unsure of himself. She’ll hold his hand as long as he lets her. Stand by his side as long as he needs until he believes in himself the way she believes in him. Sees himself the way they all see him.

            (It makes more sense, though, after the shack. Why he is the way he is.)

\---

            It occurs to her that she should feel suffocated, trapped, here in this house with him. Where she could become BethandDaryl, where they could be confined to these walls and this land. Stuck.

            But she finds herself hoping they’ll stay. That he’ll want to, that they can give this a shot.

            She never wanted to be someone’s wife, stuck at home with a baby and laundry and dishes, but she finds herself almost wishing for it, if it could be with him.

            It’s not as scary as she would’ve thought.

\---

            (“Maybe we stick around here for a while.”)

\---

            And the end of the world is a terrible time for dating, terrible time for butterflies in your stomach or falling in love.

            And yet—

\---

            (She thinks maybe third time’s the charm.)

\---

            When she realizes she’s lost him—and she prays to God it really _was_ his voice calling after her as the car sped away and not some figment of her imagination—the tears come faster than they have in a long time.

            (Losing him hurts worse than it did for any of her boyfriends, which is funny because he _wasn’t_ her boyfriend.)

\---

            (He was more than that.)

\---

            ( _Is_ more than that.)

\---

            She always knew he’d be the last man standing but she never wanted it like this.

\---

            (Hell of a time to fall in love, anyway. The apocalypse.)


End file.
